


remembering a room that isn't there

by grumdark



Category: Kill la Kill
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, allusions to sexual abuse/rape, platonic ryuko/satsuki, they live together ig
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-14
Updated: 2017-02-14
Packaged: 2018-09-24 07:49:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 579
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9712085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grumdark/pseuds/grumdark





	

she’s dead. she is dead, and you know this because you’ve heard first-hand how she reached inside herself and was gutted by her own fist. and you know this because it’s over (as far as you know, as far as you hope).  
she is dead and you know this, because her body exists no more.  
“she can’t touch you. she can’t do it anymore.” you’ve been promised over and over with hands too nervous to come in contact with your form. “you are safe now”, and you wish you could believe it.  
she’s dead. the witch is dead, the bitch is dead.  
you think she might have taken her physical body in exchange for a phantom one, with cold fingers and palms that paint you like a canvas in angry cadmium red and leave you on the bedroom floor, the bathroom floor, rotting in the shower until you think your skin might melt off your shaking skeleton.  
sometimes your better half dries you off and you’re grateful, and you don’t know what you’d do without her, and you tell her this.  
“it’s nothing,” she touches you so gently you barely feel it. “you’d do the same for me.”  
and you wonder what you did to deserve such careful contact.  
-  
she’s touching you again and it hurts. it hurts it hurts your spine and your backside and your thighs, stinging and burning and oh so real. you want so badly to fight back, but psychologists state that alongside fight or flight, there are two other reactions to stress: freeze and submit. you freeze and you submit.  
your wrists ache from phantom cuffs. without consciousness in the physical world, you want nothing more than to cut off your hands at the base. anything to free yourself of this trap.  
and again, again, you are brought back to earth with a quiet voice. the slightest ghosting of calloused fingertips assure your inner arms that they’re free and safe.  
“you’re not there anymore. you never have to go back.” her voice is unwavering and comfortable. it’s been months, and you wonder why you spend most days out of your body and most nights in the grip of your mother’s fingers down and up and all over you. it’s been months, and you wonder why it’s gotten worse.  
you ask if she ever gets tired of this, of you.  
“never.” she is confident and raises a hand to your sick-pale face. you hold it closer.  
-  
a week passes before the cycle begins again. you wake in shaking sobs and hollers, and immediately your bedroom door opens urgently. a familiar and normally grounding voice rasps concern, and yet in the moment you hear nothing but Her and in a fit of dissociated confusion you scream and the bedside lamp hits your wrist, hits the floor, and you can’t hear your own words but you know you don’t mean them. footsteps decrescendo down the hall and you sob like a child. you feel like what you think it feels like to be one (you wouldn’t know).  
drag yourself numbly down the hall and fall to your knees and apologize.  
“you don’t need to.”  
oh, but you must. it is your fault. you’re drowning in apologies and pooling fluid in your throat and the weight of your mother’s hands down your neckshoulderscollarbones and farther. you cannot breathe. you cannot breathe. you cannot breathe. you c  
-  
you are re-incarnated dressed in white with jewelry of plastic and rubber.


End file.
